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I was sent to Linton Hall Military School, Bristow, Va. during the late 1960s. These are my memories and thoughts. If you're a new visitor, I suggest you read my oldest post first, and work your way up. To find a specific post, see the index: http://lintonhallmilitaryschool.blogspot.com/2012/11/index-linton-hall-military-school.html

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I was sent to Linton Hall Military School in Bristow, Va. during the late 1960s, graduated as an officer, and earned a medal. Since we were all subject to the same rules, schedule, and discipline, I write my memories and opinions under the pen name "Linton Hall Cadet" because it doesn't really matter who I am; I am just the one who writes about our common experience.

Saturday, September 29, 2012

One of my best memories of Linton Hall Military School was coming back to my dorm in the afternoon, after either drill or free play, and finding a letter from home on my bed, partly tucked under the top blanket by the nun in charge of our dorm.

A letter from home was the high point of my day, and the disappointment of not receiving one, especially when it had been several days since I had gotten mail, was a big disappointment, made even worse by seeing others reading the letters they had received.

Unlike the letters we sent out, which had to be left unsealed so they could be read and censored, (in cases when the writer was too critical of Linton Hall, the letter would simply be thrown away and not mailed) it was rare for incoming mail to be opened. It would only be opened when an incoming package was suspected of containing prohibited items, such as food or candy, or when the sender was a girl who clearly was not the recipient's sister. I never had the luck of having a girl write me at Linton Hall Military School; like most of us there, there was no way I could even hope to meet a girl; the few who did have female correspondents apparently managed to meet their sisters' friends, or finagled an introduction to the sister of some cadet.

A letter from home made me happy on a gut level, but I now understand that it was a connection to the better, beautiful world that existed outside Linton Hall Military School, a world that I got a taste of every other weekend, when the time home seemed to race unbearably quickly, and a world to which I looked forward to returning after I graduated from Linton Hall.

Not all letters turned out to be as pleasant as I expected.

There were the letters from relatives who did not know much about Linton Hall's reality, aunts and uncles who wrote me well-meaning but hopelessly useless advice such as "make sure you wear that red scarf I knitted for you when you go outside," "drink something hot at breakfast," "eat some fresh fruit at every meal" or "tell me how you spend your free time." I never bothered to reply that a red scarf was out of uniform, that I couldn't well walk into the nun's dining room and ask them to warm up the milk in my milk carton, and hey, Sister, add some cocoa and a couple of marshmallows while you're at it, will ya?, or turn Jello into an apple, or that there was precious little free time in the highly structured environment of Linton Hall Military School.

Then there was a letter from a friend, who also meant well in telling me what he had been up to and giving me news of mutual friends, but who was telling me about an existence completely different from mine, of things that other twelve year olds like he and I routinely got to do, like walking to the store or just to and from school, and of his having done things I had no hope of doing, like when he told me about a kissing game he had played, and mentioned the names of girls we both knew. And what could I write back that he would understand about my daily existence -- about how my bed lined up with everyone else's bed and with the tiles on the floor?

The worst letter of all was the one I got from my mother, in response to my plea to not be sent back to Linton Hall Military School the following year. I would be going back and she didn't want me to bring it up again, she had said. And as I write this, I've spent the past several minutes trying to write, to explain how I felt, and how I still feel about that, and I just can't find the words. So I'm going to end this post in a very abrupt way. There's nothing more I can say.

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Copyright 2012 by "Linton Hall Cadet."
Please respect copyright by linking to this post instead of copying and pasting.
This blog is not affiliated with Linton Hall Military School (Linton Hall School) and all opinions are those of the author.
Comments are always welcome; please do not use your name or names of others.

Thursday, September 13, 2012

Occasionally, some Linton Hall alumni have contacted me in their attempts to locate other Linton Hall alumni. The task is not easy because we live in a big country, with many people sharing the same name. Also, although most of us came from the DC metro area (those from Mexico were a notable exception) so many years have passed that many have moved out of the area. Here's what I've tried, and the results I've experienced.

Facebook.com Although Facebook use is more prevalent among younger people, I have found classmates from the sixties and even a couple of alumni from the forties on Facebook. Since there are photos, you can quickly eliminate many name matches because they are not the age or race of the person you're looking for.

Google.com Not too useful; I have read about a couple of Linton Hall alumni but was not able to get contact information.

Classmates.com Good concept but didn't work in practice. The site lists about 300 Linton Hall Military School alumni (as well as more recent alumni of the post-military Linton Hall School.) The way it works, in order to be able to email someone, either the sender or the receiver must be a currently paid-up member. I signed up for a trial membership, which costs only a few bucks, and contacted all LHMS alumni, writing individual emails so as to avoid being blocked for sending spam. Only 3 or 4 opened my message. I suspect either the emails they provided are no longer current, or they have added Classmates to their spam list. (As a member I got a LOT of email from Classmates!)

Intelius.com and USsearch.com These are people-finder databases. They appear to get most of their data from credit bureau reports (it's legal to sell and rent identifying information including name, address, phone and date of birth, but not Social Security numbers or information about credit accounts.) They also seem to get data from real estate purchases and phone directories.

You can do an initial search for free to see whether they have information for a certain name, then buy the contact information if you choose. I believe both companies offer an unlimited search pass, good for a 24-hour period, for about 20 bucks. I forget which of the two companies I used. By limiting searches to DC, MD, and VA, I found people whose current or previous address was in those states. Many results included the person's current age, helpful in narrowing down results. (Keep in mind that in many cases kids were 1, 2, sometimes even 3 years older than the "typical age" for that grade. In eighth grade, most of us were 13, but there were a couple of 14 and 15 year olds.

Results usually include several addresses (former and current, but without specifying which is the current one) so you'll probably have to mail off a form letter to several addresses. Phone numbers are only listed occasionally.

Spokeo.com Offers a trial membership for 30 or 90 days (don't remember.) You can do quite a few searches in that period but it's not unlimited. Similar to the above databases.

Mexicans and those from other countries I know of no database to find them. (USSEarch, Intelius and Spokeo only cover the U.S.) Mexicans, as well as those from other Spanish speaking countries, usually use a double last name (father's followed by mother's) and it would be very helpful to have both when searching for someone. Unfortunately, the Linton Hall Military School yearbook listed most under just their father's last name.

Other ways to search? Please share them.-------Copyright 2012 by "Linton Hall Cadet."Please respect copyright by linking to this post instead of copying and pasting.This blog is not affiliated with Linton Hall Military School and all opinions are those of the author. Comments are always welcome; please do not use your name or names of others.

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

During "rest" in the evening, as well as after school, we would get a candy bar or, sometimes, a popsicle. Sometimes we had a choice and we would line up at the canteen; other times we all got the same thing.

In those days, candy bars, as well as full-size cereal boxes (not the single-serve cereal boxes they gave us at breakfast) often had offers whereby you could collect wrappers, or sometimes just part of the wrapper, and send them in for little toy items. The candy bars we got at Linton Hall Military School often had such offers, and I remember that after we got our candy (they were called "lunches" possibly as a way for the administration to conceal the fact that we were getting billed for candy on our sundries account) there was a nun, whose name I don't remember, who would collect those wrappers so that she could order free items. I wasn't too happy with the concept; since our parents were paying for the candy, the wrappers -- and the valuable prizes we could get for them -- should have been ours, not hers. I also wondered what a grown woman was doing with the numerous little toys she was getting.

Turns out that my suspicions had been unfounded. One day, when we returned to our dorm, we saw that on each of our beds there was a red plastic object, about three feet long. Here's what it looked like:
Called a Sno-Fling, or Snofling, it's a snowball maker/thrower that works by pushing the wide end onto snow, and flicking it to throw a snowball. And we actually got to use it (just once, I believe) at a snow battle at Linton Hall Military School. We were told to take it home on the following weekend, and I did get a little enjoyment out of it at home. Years later it landed in our attic (I remember seeing it there when I was a teen) and probably eventually got either thrown away or donated. I believe that there is a photo in one of the Linton Hall yearbooks where you can see a couple of them if you look closely in one of the photos.

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Copyright 2012 by "Linton Hall Cadet."
Please respect copyright by linking to this post instead of copying and pasting.
This blog is not affiliated with Linton Hall Military School and all opinions are those of the author.
Comments are always welcome; please do not use your name or names of others.